EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SCOTT SUTTELL

Akron is the place to be if you are a frugal retiree

Blog Entry: October 17, 2013 11:47 AM | Author: SCOTT SUTTELL

Contemplating a budget retirement? You won't have to go far, assuming you already live in Northeast Ohio.

USNews.com offers up a list of 10 places where retirees “can live well on less than $75 per day.” The website says it used 2012 Census Bureau data to look for places “where people age 60 and older spend the least on housing, including rent, mortgage payments and other housing costs, and places where retirees spends less than a third of their income on housing.”

Also important: access to medical facilities, services for seniors and recreation options.

Among the 10 cities to make the cut was Akron. Here's the case the website makes for spending your golden years here:

The Akron General Medical Center and Summa Akron City and St. Thomas Hospitals are ranked as high-performing medical centers in a variety of specialties including geriatrics. These amenities are coupled with low housing costs. People age 60 and older pay a median of $1,087 per month with a mortgage, $646 in monthly rent or $420 per month if they own their homes debt free.

Akron was one of four northern cities on the list. The others: Des Moines, Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

And take note, snowbirds: There's not a single Florida city on the list.

This and that

The university is hosting its inaugural water research symposium, titled “Human Impacts on Water: Ohio's Most Important Natural Resource,” on Nov. 14 and 15 at the Kent State University Hotel and Conference Center in downtown Kent. The event is co-sponsored by the Cleveland Water Alliance.

Kent State says the symposium is designed “to provide opportunities for scholarly interactions between regional and international aquatic scientists and for the general public to learn more about the importance of water.”

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. (Go here to do that.)

“This symposium will feature internationally renowned aquatic scientists presenting leading-edge research on aquatic-terrestrial linkages and water in the city,” said Grant McGimpsey, Ph.D., Kent State's vice president for research, in a statement.

The symposium's keynote speaker is Peter H. Gleick, Ph.D., co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research organization working to advance environmental protection, economic development and social equity. Dr. Gleick is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.

This is big time: Ever wondered what all 32 NFL logos would look like if they were fat?

Of course you have. So click here to check out the work of David Rappoccio, who offers up corpulent versions of the Miami Dolphin, a Chicago Bear and a Baltimore Raven.

Some logos, of course, are a little harder to render in full splendor.

I enjoyed the Indianapolis Colts' logo, for instance, represented as a string of sausages forming a horseshoe. The San Francisco “499 pounders” is good, too.

And the Browns? An orange helmet emblazoned with “Cheetos” on the side and that cheese dust on the facemask.

Oh, Canada!: You might never feel the same way about the nice people of Canada again after reading this story from The Toronto Star.

Air Canada lost a dog in San Francisco last week when it escaped after an employee let the Italian greyhound, named Larry, out of his cage. The dog belonged to Jutta Kulic, 58, a retired Italian Greyhound breeder from Medina, Ohio, who brought the Italian greyhound with her by car en route to a dog show in Sacramento, Calif. (Larry was not to be part of the show).

As The Star notes, the airline “made the situation worse when Air Canada's manager of corporate communications appeared to callously dismiss the incident in an email that was meant to be internal.”

In what was meant to be an internal communication, but instead was sent to a reporter covering the story, Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote, “I think I would just ignore, it is local news doing a story on a lost dog. Their entire government is shut down and about to default and this is how the U.S. media spends its time.”

He told the newspaper the email was partly meant to be a joke, but he was exasperated with the line of questioning to which he had no answers.

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